


A Werewolf in Portland

by Roshwen



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Also Jake's dad is an asshole but we already knew that so, And S02 E03 And What Lies Beneath the Stones, Because come on who looks at Jacob Stone and does not immediately cry wolf, Cassandra is the only one who is properly shocked, Eve is unimpressed, Ezekiel finds the whole thing hilarious, Fluff, Humor, Jenkins is wary, Mention of S01 E07 And the Rule of Three, Multi, Werewolf AU, werewolf!jake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 16:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13080447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: When Jake was an oil rigger in Oklahoma, he kept his IQ a secret and did not mind about the wolf.Now that he is a Librarian, he does not need to keep his IQ a secret anymore. Now it’s the wolf that he keeps hidden.





	A Werewolf in Portland

When Jake was an oil rigger in Oklahoma, he kept his IQ a secret and did not mind about the wolf.

Now that he is a Librarian, he does not need to keep his IQ a secret anymore. Now it’s the wolf that he keeps hidden.

\---

At first he doesn’t tell them because he does not trust this people yet, which only gets confirmed when it turns out the cute geek girl was playing a double game. And even if she hadn’t, he sees the way the punk thief’s eyes are lighting up with greed at all the precious artefacts on display, already mentally calculating their value. Jake knows exactly how much a wolf’s pelt will go for on the black market and even though he does not think the thief will actually hurt him, he doesn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut either. Combine that with Eve’s angry exasperation at anything magical and Jenkins’ firm belief that magic should be kept out of people’s way at all costs, and it only takes Jake a couple of hours to decide that, even though he is apparently going to work with these people now, he is _not_ going to let them in on his other big secret.

Not if he can help it, anyway.

It’s going to be tricky, however. Especially because Jenkins has hundreds of years of experience with magical creatures, so Jake doesn’t expect he’ll be able to fool the man for long. Also because Ezekiel, as Jake finds out within their first week as Librarians in Training, is incredibly well versed in both pop culture and cool magical creatures that appear in pop culture. If Jake starts taking nights off exactly once a month, Ezekiel is bound to see the pattern. Hell, if Jake takes the night off during the first full moon, he can already imagine the punk cracking wolf jokes the next morning.

The only ones he does not really worry about are Cassandra and Eve, but that might be a mistake. Because Eve notices more than she lets on, especially where the physical state of her charges are concerned. If he shows up the night after the full moon, when he’s usually covered in scratches and bruises and ready to drop with exhaustion, she is going to want to know why.

Plus, Cassandra wears a lot of silver jewelry. Shaking her hand when he met her had left a welt on his palm the size of a nickel. Not that he is planning to come anywhere near that traitorous little minx anytime soon, but still. He’s got to be careful about this.

\---

The night after they face down the Minotaur, he goes home, gets his lunar calendar out and starts creating a random pattern of nights he is going to ‘stay at home with a headache’. He also calls a buddy to hit him up with some wolfsbane (it won’t stop the shift entirely, but he will be able to delay it for a couple of hours. No being caught in sudden rays of moonlight during a mission for him, no sir).

At least this way, he can be reasonably sure his wolf won’t make a surprise appearance, but there are still other things that might give him away. So he spends a very carefully gloved two hours in the Annex kitchen, picking the silver cutlery out of the mass of knives, forks and spoons that has aggregated in the cutlery drawer over the centuries. When Ezekiel catches him in the act and tells him why he’s playing at being the worst Jean Valjean in history, Jake glares and tells him that _this is antique silver, Jones, it has no business bein’ in a kitchen drawer it should be in a museum._ The M-word makes Ezekiel squawk and shudder, but he also leaves Jake alone. Probably to go and pester Cassandra about something, Jake doesn’t care. This was the first close call and he made it out unscathed within a minute; it looks like he might be able to pull this off after all.

\---

Then Jenkins comes up to him when everybody else is about to head home, and asks if Jake could step into his lab for a moment.

‘It was the silverware, wasn’t it,’ Jake says after Jenkins has stared at him for an uncomfortably long minute. It’s funny: Jake would have thought that his pop was the only one could make him squirm, but one look from Jenkins and Jake feels like a naughty five-year-old-again.

‘That did catch my attention, yes,’ Jenkins says. ‘But frankly, Mr. Stone, I knew you for what you were the moment I laid eyes on you.’

That does surprise Jake. ‘How?’ he asks. ‘I mean, I thought I blended in pretty well by now.’

Jenkins hums and gives him a tight-lipped smile. ‘Well, yes. You are pretty subtle, I grant you that. But the way you hold yourself gives you away immediately to anyone who knows what to look for. And trust me, Mr. Stone. After almost fifteen hundred years, I do know what to look for.’

That makes sense, and it’s no more than Jake expected would happen eventually. There is nothing more to say, except: ‘You won’t tell the others?’

‘It’s not mine to tell,’ Jenkins says with a shrug before he fixes Jake with another grave look. ‘But Mr. Stone, you do understand. If you hurt one of them, what I have to do.’

‘I do,’ Jake says, looking Jenkins squarely in the eye. Because he does. And even though it might sound weird, he is relieved to know Jenkins will be there if, god forbid, the wolf ever gets out of control.

\---

So now Jenkins knows, the others are still oblivious and Jake manages to keep it that way for quite some time. A lot longer than he thought he would, if you think about how close the four of them are working together. There are a couple of close calls again, such as artefacts that turn out to be partly made of silver, or chasing down a wendigo through a forest in the middle of the night, two nights before the full moon.

That was not a fun night. But he manages to shove the wolf down and stay human up and until they are back at the Annex, exhausted and covered in mud and wendigo gore, so no one is any the wiser (and if Jenkins looks at Jake a little longer than strictly necessary, Jake is very good at pretending not to notice).

\---

When they meet Morgan Le Fay, she fixes him with a long, appreciative look. She doesn’t say anything, but Jake spends the rest of the mission as far away from her as possible. Because where Jenkins might not trust his wolf, it’s clear that Morgan _wants_ the wolf and that, to Jake, is far more dangerous. And Morgan and Jenkins are not the only ones who can spot a werewolf a mile off: Jake soon learns that he might be able to avoid silver artefacts, he might be able to make contingency plans for the full moon, but he will not be able to keep every magical creature they come across from noticing what he is.

Let alone force every magical creature to keep its gob shut.

That might be a complication.

\---

There’s another complication, however, and that one is a little more urgent. Because somewhere in between all the running about and saving the world, Cassandra has managed to squirrel her way back into Jake’s (very small) circle of trust, and then a bit further. As has Ezekiel. It’s not love, not yet, it’s not even something to base a relationship on, but still. Jake has enough life experience behind him to see where the three of them are headed and he doesn’t mind.

He does not mind spending the evening after a mission in some dive Ezekiel has found and which serves surprisingly good beer, the two of them tucked away in a dimly lit booth, talking about nothing and everything and laughing so hard their stomachs hurt. Jake knows Ezekiel can’t see him that well in the darkness, but he can see Ezekiel clear as day and he takes full advantage of that fact. And if his voice starts coming out a little lower, a little growlier as the evening draws on, he blames it on the beer.

He does not mind driving Cassandra home at the end of the day, Cassandra always talking a mile a minute about their most recent case or her most recent mathemagical discovery. Jake has long ago given up trying to make heads or tails of her stories: instead he smiles, lets her words wash over him and tries not to sniff too obviously as her scent fills the truck. She smells warm and sweet, with a hint of flowers and after he has dropped her off, he still smells her all the way back to his own place.

\---

This goes on for quite some time. Through the recovery of the Library and the apparent rise of Prospero (and even though he’s obviously a villain, it’s a villain from _Shakespeare_ come to life and Jake could not be more pumped about this). He keeps his wolf a secret.

Until they get to Oklahoma to fight a spirit that feeds on lies.

He’s lucky he’s got another secret to tell in the cave, one that carries even more weight than the wolf, but that’s about the only good thing in this whole entire mess. Because his dad isn’t just mad at him for being a dumb hick, or for leaving and letting the company go under (even though that’s _not_ Jake’s fault and his pop knows it). No.

Jake’s dad is pissed because Jake left the _pack_.

‘You think you can waltz back in here,’ his pop growls at him after Jake has fixed the car, ‘the stink of those other two all over you, and you say you wanna _help?_ _Fuck off!’_ The last words are a snarl. His father’s canines are already growing longer, his hair is standing on end and Jake knows the Hoklonote spirit is no longer the most dangerous creature on the dig site.

‘Helpin’ is what we do, pop,’ he says, trying his level best not to cower under his father’s fury. If he shows fear, he’s done for. Blood or not, now that he’s left the pack he is fair game. ‘And I promise, once we’re done saving your ass here, we’re out. And I won’t come back.’

It’s a promise that claws at his insides, but it works. His father huffs, fixes Jake with another scowl and then gives a sharp nod. ‘You better not,’ he says before he turns on his heels and stalks away, leaving Jake to slump against the beat up car.

Later, they enter the cave, they tell the truth and Jake wrestles with himself in more ways than one. But after they get back to the Annex, when Cassandra and Ezekiel look at him with worry and ask him if he wants to join them for drinks (they don’t say they want to keep an eye on him for a while, even though that’s clearly the intended goal here), he shakes his head. Gives them a weary smile and tells them that he’s not in the mood. Ezekiel nods and does not press him, but Cassandra just has to come up and hug him tight, assaulting all his senses while he’s already in hyperdrive and the wolf is crying out just below the surface.

Through some kind of heroic effort, he manages to hug her back, manages not to get overwhelmed by her scent, the softness of her skin against his cheek, the beating of her heart just under his hands, the warm _aliveness_ of her being in his arms. Jake scrunches his eyes shut and focuses on his breathing, telling the wolf to _stay down_ until she lets go after an agonizing eternity. She pecks his cheek, tells him to call if he needs anything and then she and Ezekiel are out the door and Jake is finally, mercifully alone.

And in no state to go home.

There’s a storm raging inside, the wolf is howling and if he goes home now, his apartment will be trashed by morning. If he’s lucky and doesn’t end up trashing his entire neighborhood. So after a couple of minutes of careful deliberation, he tears a page out of his notebook to write a note for Jenkins, then punches the coordinates to a remote settlement near the arctic circle into the globe next to the backdoor. He strips down, folds his clothes in a neat pile on his desk with his shoes on the floor to the side. Then he opens the backdoor, takes a few steps back and starts to run.

He lands on the tundra in a flying leap, his legs barely hitting the ground before he is off again, bounding away into the darkness. It’s cold here, so far up north, but the wolf doesn’t care. In fact, the wolf loves it. Loves the metallic tang of freezing air, loves the icy wind blowing through his coat, the crunch of frosted snow under his feet.

The world looks different to the wolf than it does to Jake, all the colors making place for a million different shades of black and white and grey. But his vision and the colors of the world around him do not matter anymore, because his ears and nose are taking the lead, telling him where to go and what to do. And what the wolf wants to do, more than anything, is _run._

And running is what he does.

He runs and runs and runs for miles on end, without destination or goal in mind because there isn’t one. He runs over grassy plains and rocky outcrops near the sea, listening to the roaring of the waves beyond, he runs through small settlements and along the edge of a glacier, a massive wall of ice that glows white in the moonlight. The stars overhead watch him go, pricking through the black night sky and they are cold too, ice cold diamonds caught in velvet. The wolf knows the stars in ways that Jake doesn’t and he feels both very small and a giant under their watchful eye.

When he finally gets tired, and he has to slow down, to stop running, he starts to sing. Sing to the moon and the stars and the sea, sing about everything he has lost that day and everything he has gained in return, sing out all his despair and frustration and want. His song echoes through the night and is picked up in the distance by others who very prudently stay out of his way. The wolf hears it, but where it usually would have sought out his kin in this cold and lonely world, right now, he doesn’t. Instead, his song takes on an edge as he warns the others to steer clear, even though it is not necessary. Nobody would come near him tonight, as nobody should.

He sings for almost as long as he has run, and when he is done, he slowly trots back to the shack where the backdoor spit him out, curls up behind it and promptly falls asleep.

\---

Of course, when he stumbles through the backdoor early the next morning, exhausted, completely naked and covered in moss and mud, Eve has to be standing there, leaning against her desk and sipping from a coffee mug. She looks remarkably unperturbed, unlike Jake, who has to scramble to find something that will cover at least one small (well, not that small, thank you very much) but vital part of him.

‘You knew?’ he asks, once he’s grabbed a book from the nearest shelf and made his way to his desk with as much grace as he can muster under the circumstances.

‘Not until yesterday,’ Eve says, looking at him over the rim of her mug with barely concealed amusement. ‘But you meet all kinds of people in a warzone. Now, why don’t you go home, get some sleep and when you come back, you and I are going to have a little chat about keeping vital information from your Guardian.’

That’s fair enough, so Jake nods, pulls on his pants and then hightails it out of the Annex and into his truck, thanking every deity he knows that at least Ezekiel and Cassandra aren’t the type to get to work at 6 in the morning.

\---

When he gets back to the Annex the next day, there is a hook hanging on the wall next to the backdoor. At just the right height so that someone could, in theory, hang a bathrobe right next to the door so that they do not have to walk all the way across the Annex to his desk in their birthday suit to get to their clothes.

There’s even a bathrobe provided, in the bottom drawer of Jake’s desk. It’s light blue with dark blue puppy paw prints all over it. Jake spends a good long minute staring at it before he carefully closes and _locks_ the drawer again, pretending not to see how Eve is suddenly very busy re-organizing her desk.

‘Well played,’ he mutters later that morning as he refills her coffee cup.

Her angelic expression as she takes a sip tells him everything. ‘Stone, I have no idea what you mean.’

\---

After all of this, it’s clear that it’s only a matter of time before Ezekiel and Cassandra find out as well. And even though Jake knows he should tell them himself and not wait for the inevitable ray of accidental moonlight, he still hesitates and he doesn’t know why. Because he _trusts_ these people now. They have earned it through three years of saving the world together, they have proven themselves over and over again. He knows Cassandra would rather die than sell them out again. He knows Jones can keep a secret, probably even better than any of them. He knows it in his bones and he feels it in his gut that he and the wolf will be safe with them.

But he still doesn’t tell them. He keeps telling himself that he is just waiting for the right moment, while not even knowing what that right moment would be.

\---

It turns out, the right moment happens the day after the three of them somehow, someway end up in bed together. As Jake knew they eventually would, he just did not expect it to happen like this. They had spent the entire week on a grueling mission, barely managing to save a school full of children from a hoard of vampires disguised as teachers. They won, but not without casualties: two children were turned while Cassandra and Ezekiel had been trying to flush out the vampires, and then there had been the three children whose disappearance led them to the school in the first place. They knew they had been too late to save them, but it still hurt more than any of them had wanted to admit. Surprisingly, it had been Ezekiel who had sought out Jake and Cassandra first, turning to them for comfort.

Comfort had led to hugging, had led to kissing, had led to the three of them now lying tangled together in Ezekiel’s bed, while late morning sunlight is peeking through the drapes. And Jake knows he can’t keep putting this off any longer.

He slips out of bed, smiling at Cassandra’s disapproving murmur of _no, cold, stay here_. He bends over to peck her cheek and tell her that he’ll be right back, but now Ezekiel is awake as well and demanding to know why on earth the cowboy is out of bed already at this godforsaken hour of 11am.

‘There’s something I gotta tell you,’ Jake says, making his way to the other side of the bed so that he can kiss Ezekiel’s cheek as well, for good measure. This earns him a half-hearted glare from Ezekiel and a giggle from Cassandra and Jake smiles down again at the both of them before he continues: ‘But it ain’t something to tell on an empty stomach. Thought I’d fix you up some breakfast first.’

The thought of Jake going anywhere _near_ his precious tea immediately propels Ezekiel out of the bed and into the kitchen, followed by Cassandra, so the three of them end up making and eating breakfast together. This means that the quiet moment in which Jake had planned to find a way to break his secret is lost, but in return he gets to discover that Ezekiel not only knows his tea, but also brews a mean cup of morning coffee (‘Yeah, did a stint as a barista once while I was casing an art gallery. Didn’t last long, but you pick it up soon enough). He also finds out that Cassandra is a very touchy person before breakfast, in the sense that she is either wrapped around Ezekiel or has plastered herself against Jake. Something neither of them mind at all. So on balance, Jake does not regret the loss of his quiet moment too much.

But then breakfast is over, Cassandra is looking at him expectantly and Ezekiel is leaning back and says: ‘Well, cowboy? You wanted to tell us something?’

The moment of truth has arrived. Jake should feel nervous, maybe panic a little, but instead he feels strangely calm. He has been through hell and back with these people. He trusts them. He loves them, even. And he’s pretty sure that they trust and love him too, which is blowing his mind, but it’s true all the same.

So he nods. ‘I do, but I’m not sure telling you is the best way to go. Think it’d be easier to just show you.’

He stands up. ‘You stay here. And… well. Don’t panic, okay?’

Then he walks out of the kitchen and back to the bedroom, firmly ignoring Cassandra’s sudden panicked look and Ezekiel’s muttering about cowboy drama queens. In the bedroom, he first locates one of Ezekiel’s definitely-not-stolen-from-a-four-star-hotel bathrobes and lays it out on the bed, just in case things don’t go as planned and he has to shift back and get decent immediately.

Contingency bathrobe in place, he carefully sets the bedroom door ajar (shutting it is not a good idea if you’re not going to have opposable thumbs when you want to get out), takes a deep breath and shifts.

The bedroom around him suddenly becomes a kaleidoscope of smells, assaulting his nose in a dazzling storm. He can smell Cassandra and Ezekiel as if they were standing right next to him, and best of all, he can smell himself in there as well. He smells heat and sweat and sex, Ezekiel’s stupidly expensive shampoo, Cassie’s flowery perfume and his own cologne, all mixing together to the most wonderfully enticing bouquet the wolf has ever encountered. He almost whimpers with the beauty of it, but then someone knocks at the bedroom door. A voice asks if he’s doing okay in there and it’s time for the wolf to come out.

He nudges the bedroom door open but that is about as far as he gets. Because Ezekiel and Cassandra are standing in the doorway, staring in mute incomprehension at the rusty brown wolf the size of a pony suddenly standing in Ezekiel’s bedroom. Then they see the familiar blue eyes looking up at them and a bucket of pennies drops with an almost audible clatter. Ezekiel bursts out in near hysterical laughter, barely keeping himself upright against the wall, gasping about how _this is just to good man, Stone is a fucking werewolf holy shit we’ve got ourselves a cowboy werewolf._ The wolf patently decides to ignore him, instead focusing his attention on Cassandra who has sunken to her knees and is now staring at him with eyes that are almost popping right out of their sockets, her face pale and her hands clasped in front of her mouth in shock. The wolf can hear her heart rabbiting in her chest and that is not right.

Cassandra looking this terrified is _wrong._ For a moment, the wolf debates shifting back so that he can tell her that it’s okay, he’s nothing to be afraid of, but he decides against it. Instead, he hunches in on himself, makes himself as non-threatening as possible and takes a careful step forward until he can nudge her arm with his nose, whining softly.

That’s all it takes. In an instant, Cassandra’s terror recedes and makes place for a muffled squeak and two arms wrapped tight around the wolf’s neck while she buries her face in his coat. She is shaking, the wolf, notices and she suddenly smells somewhat wet and salty, but that’s okay. Because Ezekiel has calmed down a little and is now crouching on the floor as well, carefully stretching out his hand for the wolf to sniff.

As if the wolf didn’t already know how Ezekiel smells. So instead of sniffing, he bumps his nose against Ezekiel’s hand and looks at him, hoping the punk will get the message.

Ezekiel does. To anyone outside looking in, it must look like the weirdest group hug ever (not in the least because one person in the group isn’t even in human form at the moment), but the wolf doesn’t care. Because he has not only found a new pack at the Library, with people he can protect and who will protect him in return, but now he has found two mates as well.

And as he drags a long, smooth tongue over Ezekiel’s ear in a sort of wolf wet willy, making Ezekiel yelp before he collapses with laughter against him for the second time that morning, while Cassandra smacks him upside the head before she bursts out in giggles as well, the wolf finally feels like he has come home at last.

**Author's Note:**

> No, that one person that is also a fan of Cabin Pressure: that tiny settlement in the arctic circle where Jake goes for a run does not start with a Q. Not at all. I don't know where you got that idea from...


End file.
